


Knife and Needle and Rope

by ninemoons42



Series: Serial Killer 'Verse [1]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Dark!Charles, Disguise, Gen, Knifeplay, Serial Killers, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-02
Updated: 2011-11-02
Packaged: 2017-10-25 15:38:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42





	Knife and Needle and Rope

  
title: Knife and Needle and Rope  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ninemoons42**](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)  
word count: approx. 1060  
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]  
characters: Charles Xavier. mention of Erik Lehnsherr  
rating: R  
notes: Birthday fic for [](http://papercutperfect.livejournal.com/profile)[**papercutperfect**](http://papercutperfect.livejournal.com/) , the Charles to my Erik, best RP buddy and all-around amazing person. She and I have made an agreement to write a 'verse in which Charles is a serial killer and Erik is kind of beaten down by life and eventually falls in love with him. This is a sort of introduction to the 'verse and introduces Charles and his weapons of choice.  
Warning for basically most serial killer / murder mystery tropes and everything else that might be associated with the idea of a dark version of Charles Xavier.  
Love you, dearest Bloo.

  
It's the battered things he likes best. Old and worn and imperfect. Chips off the corners. Nicks on the sides. Every book he's ever owned is the good kind of second-hand. He prefers to wear hand-me-down clothes.

After all, no one looks twice at a disheveled, absent-minded boy in a shapeless cardigan. Arms full of books, head down, blue eyes dreaming distant dreams. Pretty, but vacant – just the way he likes them to think.

But there are some things that serve him better when they're new, when they come to him untested and pristine.

The leather cracks in protest as he flexes his fingers. Black, and still a little bit too shiny for his tastes. At least they're comfortable, and with the work he intends to do with them, they'll quiet down quickly enough.

Everything does, eventually.

The snaps on his wrist click softly into place.

Something old now, after something new.

Charles smiles and takes up the knife from his desk, turning it over in reverent fingers. It's still warm all over. He prefers to carry it next to his own skin, strapped discreetly to his forearm, where his sleeves will conceal it from the world.

He's had this one for a while now, and he has nothing except good memories associated with the black reverse-S blade. So easy to use. A little finicky to care for, but he finds the process of sharpening it and maintaining it almost as soothing as he does using it.

And there is only one thing he uses this knife for.

Marking the world. Taking it. Making it his: one wound at a time. One heart after another.

He flicks out the blade – a smooth, easy motion. Presses the tip into his finger. Just enough to dent the skin, not enough to break it. He watches his fingertip go white under the point of the blade. He feels the bite of the knife; he feels his body flex and wait with the handle of the knife at its very end, blood thumping and muscles tense with readiness.

He is a little bit in love with the way his fingers grip the knife.

It's the same feeling as when he's working the knife into and out of someone else: there's a delicacy to it. His muscles easily translate his wishes into movements he can see and feel. Into something the person receiving the blade can fight.

They always lose the fight, in the end, and Charles is left with the faint red steam from the blood on his hands, the blood he carefully wipes away from his gloves.

Muscles, blood, bone, flesh. How easily they give way. How wet and strange and oddly familiar, once he gets down to his work. The human body: a bag of textures and smells and strange flavors.

Eventually, he stops playing with the knife, and he puts the base of the blade to his lips and reverently kisses the metal. Clicks the knife back into its closed position and slides it into place, to warm against his skin once again.

The other item on the table is a long coil of rope. This, too, is new.

Charles idly unwinds a few feet and starts to hum under his breath as he knots and unknots the rope. He can tie a bowline in his sleep, and he never tires of coming up with variations on it. It's a useful knot for restraining people.

He prises the knot apart, measures out several bights. The skin stretched over his shoulders begins to burn under his movements.

Charles merely smiles, and hums as he works: _When we grow up we'll both be soldiers, and our horses will not be toys._

The song trails off. The rope squeaks in protest as he keeps wrapping: _...eleven, twelve, thirteen._

A hangman's noose.

There's not much fun in stringing people up, he thinks. When they're off the ground, they thrash and they fight, and the fear comes off them like a stench. It doesn't work for him. He likes it when they lie in his arms and tremble quietly. He likes being able to look into their faces, into their eyes, as the life flees and the blood cools on his fingers.

Charles holds his handiwork up and, on a lark, drapes the collar around his neck. The movement very nearly makes him hiss – but it's not because of the pain – what burns along his shoulders, the skin of his back, is pure pleasure. Self-inflicted bliss.

Well. Perhaps not only self-inflicted. He's glad for the mirrors in the tattoo shop for more than just being able to watch as the ink was pressed into the skin, hummingbird-fast movement of the needle, into and out of his skin. Enforced stillness. The tattoo artist, poetry and _Jane Eyre_ and _Macbeth_ and _The Lord of the Rings_ written into his skin.

Charles smiles fondly. He'd told the artist exactly what he wanted, and how large he wanted it to be.

The man had merely peered at him over the pair of glasses that should have made him revoltingly unattractive, and he'd taken the design that Charles had spent hours on, taken up a pencil and outlined a few changes.

And Charles laughs now, as he did then, because the phoenix design had suddenly seemed to spring off the paper, had suddenly looked as though it were truly in flight.

Ink flowing in his skin now, Charles muses, and he flexes his shoulders because he can, because it makes him smile to feel the pain of those thousand needles, the haunted regard of the man inscribing him. Eyes that were blue and green and grey under shifting light.

He has another appointment, later tonight, and he'd only had to talk over the man's objections once; he's supposed to wait a week or two between sessions, but it's only been four days, and he's already antsy, he wants the needle again.

With some reluctance he restores the rope into its pristine coil; he ties the working end into a loose knot around the rest of it. He smells his hands appreciatively, thinks of fields and winter winds. And then, his movements become resolute, and he packs all of his gear away into a nondescript knapsack.

He has work to do, tonight.  



End file.
